The recommendation stream from Last.fm today has been incredible. A major highlight was catching Mike Doughty doing some post-Soul Coughing work. Check out this acoustic series. It’s poppy and bouncy, with Doughty’s unmistakable voice. I can see some shopping in my future.

With the end of August loitering over on the edge of the calendar, it’s time to take stock of the upcoming changes to the way buses are operating.

The Eastbourne routes are displaying posters announcing the end of the trial, which extended the #83 to the Wellington Hospital. The trial has been terminated and is considered unsuccessful, citing insufficient patronage to continue the service. Users are advised that they can still reach the hospital by bus, requiring a transfer from the Valley Flyer service to a Go Wellington service. However, this transfer will incur a second full fare, since there is still no integrated ticketing available for the Wellington region.

As of August 29th, Go Wellington will be discontinuing 10-trip tickets in favour of Snapper payments. Snapper offers a 25% discount over regular fares, compared to 20% for the 10-trip tickets, but after October 1st will start to incur transaction costs to load money on the card. On the other hand, regular fares are on the rise. The extra discount that Snapper offers will easily be lost in the increases. No one should be surprised.

With the new prices, however, it is again time to evaluate the benefits of the monthly pass versus per-trip fares. The short story is that my beloved Platinum Pass is no longer cost-effective. A combination of smart-cards will be responsible for getting me to and from work.

These two graphs show the cross-over point of affordability for trips on a single bus. The comparison is the constant price of a monthly pass versus the increasing cost of discounted fares – two trips per day, ranging from 16 to 22 working days per month.

A Gold Pass is marginally affordable for people traveling 2 zones, depending on any extra trips that may be taken outside of work requirements.

The Platinum Pass becomes useful for 5 zone commuters, but only in months without holidays.

With my recent move from Hataitai (Zone 2) to Mount Cook (Zone 1), my affordability line has shifted away from using the Platinum Pass. For a 20-day working month, I fall $36 dollars short of affordability, considering only work. Even with a weekly 2-way 2 zone trip to Kilbirnie, I still don’t quite cross the line for a normal month. I may hold off on the shift, though. September has 23 working days and 5 Mondays, costing $165.60 and $22.50 for the two requirements, which just passes the $180 of a Platinum Pass, assuming I don’t take a day off along the way.

Future changes may make this sort of evaluation irrelevant. Poneke says that Snapper is to replace the Gold Pass next year, and the Platinum Pass may be replaced eventually, if the bus companies can work out their integrated ticketing roadblocks. Ideally, a clever smart-card would stop charging a user who has surpassed the cost of a monthly pass. One could hope.